Thread: the euro

I've concluded that the people at the U.S. Mint in charge of currency design are incompetent. The $1 coin is the best illustration of this. Sometime in the 1970s, a $1 dollar coin was released with Susan B. Anthony on the front. Unfortunatly, the coin was almost the exact same size and color as a quarter (25 cent piece), and was only produced in small numbers along side the usuall massive production run of $1 bills. It rapidly faded into oblivion.

Two years ago they decided to try again. This time the coin (now featuring Sacajawea, the American Indian guide to Lewis and Clark) was made substantially bigger than the quarter, and a shiny gold color (very similar to the Canadian $1 coin.) They ran a multi-million dollar ad campaign on national TV and distributed the coin in large numbers at major department stores. Then, apparently, they forgot about it, and I haven't seen one in over a year while crisp new $1 bills are still all over the place. They don't seem to grasp that for the coin to be successful, they have to get rid of the bill.

As for colored currency, that's about as likely to show up here anytime soon as the metric system (though metric units are very slowly creeping up on us, especially in pharmaceutical products and beverages.)

I was working in this store in downtown Chicago a while back. Just to mess with people, I would give them the gold dollar as change lol...People ALWAYS wanted a bill instead. No one likes change except my grandpa ...He carries so much change around he must weigh an extra 10lbs.
People think of them as more of a collectible than a form of currency. It's funny. But they are all over the place here ...I see them all the time.

If I am gonna look at a bill to see what color it is ...I can just as easily look at it to see the number on it. Maybe it is easier to have different colors, but I wouldn't know.

What's the U.S exchange rate on these Euros? I didn't hear anything about it till I saw something on CNN yesterday. How many countries are actually involved?

>>Do you have an easy exchange course Euro -> YourFormerCurrency ?<<
For Belgium: 1 euro is 40 belgian franks.

>>How many countries are actually involved?
Belgium, Germany, Finland, France, Ireland, Itali, Luxemburg, Holland, Austria, Portugal, Spain and Greece. (sorry if I translated the name of a county wrong)

Denmark, UK and Sweden aren't intoducing the new currency

>>What's the U.S exchange rate on these Euros?
1 euro = 0.88$ (I think)

In response to the guy whose grandpa likes carrying change. i carry a ton of change, of course noe of you will ever find out for the next 12 years, 221 days. I'm dead serious - I know exactly what will happen on August 11th 2014. And no, I'm not a terrorist. I just plan on a long and fruitful life of constant pay phone calls to Northern California... Now I'm keeping you all in suspense, which will last a total of ten seconds until you lose interest.

Hey, if I wanted to be mocked I'd go over to my brother's house.

And you're only jealous because the voices talk to me.

I would like to add that I, too, hate change. What happens when I got a few pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters as change? I shove them in some desk drawer and forget about them, or I just give them to someone else. The Sacagowea dollar coin is still a rarity: I have never been given one as change. As others have said, most people view the Sacagowea dollar coin as an oddity and collectable instead of usable money.

In my wallet, I typically try to keep similar denominations of bills next to eachother to more easily keep track of them. Seeing the big portrait on the bills is also an easy way of identifying them, although it is probably slightly more difficult than working with bills of different colors and, maybe, with bills of different sizes.

In the U.S., the average person would probably appreciate the euro in that it would make European tourism easier for them. A complaint among Americans who can actually afford to visit Europe fairly frequently is keeping track of all the European currencies: Before, they had to get their French francs, their Deutsche marks, their Italian lira, etc.

Well, the reason we hate change is because it's worthless - what can you buy for $0.25? However, $1 can buy a lot of things, and allows you to just reach into your pocket rather than fumbling through a billfold searching for the right denomination.

Unfortunately, the $1 coin seems headed for oblivion yet again. It's a real shame that all that money is probably simply going to produce another failure like the half dollar coin and the two dollar bill.

What gets me is that a ton of other countries have made it work. I used to live in New Zeland, their, the currency goes as follows:

coins:
1c
2c
5c
10c
50c
$1
$2

notes/bills:

$5
10
etc..
It works fine. If we just stuck with an original system, people wouldn't have a problem.

Did you know - In Zimbabwe, with their exchange rate (600 zim $ = 1 US $. By the time I send this message, it will have gotten worse, trust me. You can be millinaaire there, and you'd still have to beg on the streets and live in an iron shack.